The invention relates to a soft protective construction for body protection, such as a bullet-proof shirt or vest, with at least a double-layer bullet-proof arrangement of relatively moveable rectangular or square protective plates, which can preferably be placed in pockets in a carrier material, in which the outer layer located on the shot impact side consist of steel and at least in part zones are overlapped like scales and which in the inner layer, which may be optionally lined with padding, next to the body, are arranged to absorb and largely destroy the impact energy of a striking shot.
In a soft protective construction of this kind known from DT-PS No. 631, 540 the protective plates of the inner layer next to the body are also made of steel and like the protective plates of the outer layer are overlapped like scales along two adjacent edges. To facilitate relative movement of the protective plates, the edges of all the protective plates are provided with a flat chamfer, the plates being rivetted at an oxtruded part in the centre, which forms a bevelled seating, to a rubber impregnated layer of leather. A similar rubber impregnated layer of leather is also located on the outside of the outer layer of protective plates, while the leather layer of the inner layer of protective plates next to the body is lined with padding formed of a leather layer impregnated with rubber and reinforced with spring bands and of wadding.
With this construction, such soft protective constructions have overall a fairly high flexibility, which is important in their design as, for example, armoured vests to achieve greater comfort in wearing. However, these protective constructions no longer satisfy modern requirements in respect to adequate resistance to bullets for a still acceptable total weight, since modern types of missiles have such penetrating power that even thick steel plates, only just acceptable for comfortable wear as armoured vests, are easily penetrated.
Mainly on the grounds of reduction of weight for comparable missile resistance, modern protective constructions therefore exhibit a combination of steel plates and plastics either in rigid form or as fabric, whereby in this combination the plastics, in addition to destroying the kinetic energy of the bullet by a trapping effect also destroys the impact energy which is released by the bullet as impact load directed against the body. Thus, from DT-AS No. 1,013,998 a soft construction is known in which plates of non-magnetic manganese steel are coated on at least one side with plastics and these laminated plates are placed in individual pockets with overlapping in a carrier material of resistant textile fabric. If hereby for a comparable thickness of steel plates a comparable bullet resistance is to be achieved, then for types of shot with higher penetrating power the layer of plastics coated on the steel plates must be fairly thick. With the overlapping arrangement the construction becomes bulky, especially when according to DT-AS No. 1,196,100 to achieve still greater protection against bullets the plates are ovelapped along the vertical and the horizontal plate edges. Such protective constructions, which moreover have reduced flexibility, are therefore not serviceable from the point of view of wearability.
The object of the invention is to develop a soft protective construction of the type named at the start, which, for a total weight which is acceptable for comfortable wear, satisfies the modern requirements for protection against bullets.